Humans evolved from Machines - Theory

When you look at current advances in nano-technology and nano-biology, the technology starts to look more and more like biology, and the biology starts to look mechanical.

The very process by which ribosomes read RNA strands, on a nano level looks remarkably like mechanical ratchets and cogs.

What if life was started by alien nano-probes that were self-replicating, using available strata and media to build copies of themselves.

Here they found primordial soup, C-H-O molecules and other forms, and gradually became more organized, swapping out components for local materials.

As we evolve, we will likely use nano-tech more and more, even injecting them into our bodies to allow repair of processes, clean out arteries of plaque, and even repair organs on a sub-cellular level.

Eventually we will develop 'intelligent machines' and as these tend toward the 'cybernetic', it will be more efficient to allow processes like those we see in biological systems to grow and self-repair. These 'machines' will go out and explore and the cycle will begin again.

I don't know the answer to the 'chicken and egg' of this paradigm. But if there were directed elements sent to Earth it stands to reason they could have been cyber-mechano-biological probes. This seems more likely than just a random event, such as a meteor with an alien amino acid stuck inside.

Just a thought.

I am glad you posted this. I could not agree more.

I am a nanotech nut, and try to read up on as much of the research as i can (i have several threads regarding nanotech research).

Biological entities are, at their very basis, integrated, self replicating/repairing machines.

We are machines built atop machines, actually. In our cells, the Golgi Apparatus is a machine. The cell itself is a machine. Each organ is a machine, integrated from all the other machine parts of the cells.

My wife is an LVN, getting her RN. She was taking A and P this past summer. I baffles me how hard they make it. They describe the body like a piece of art, instead of a piece of machinery.

When i broke it down into analogies of cars and other machines, she understood it so much better.

Excellent thread. It won't get much action, but i will still flag/star it just because I think it is excellent.

I have often thought about this idea. If anyone understands just a taste of Nano-technology they can see the parallels. I hope realization urges people to take note of the underlined message.

"We are not humans having a spiritual experiences, we are spirits having a human experience."

I can't wait to notice the present moments unfold.

AAC

Well, the human body is known as "Nature's perfect machine"

Originally posted by bigfatfurrytexan
When i broke it down into analogies of cars and other machines, she understood it so much better.

Excellent thread. It won't get much action, but i will still flag/star it just because I think it is excellent.

Thanks. There's a lot of utility with "the body as machine" description.

In martial arts I use it, thus:

To attack the body choose a system and attack those vulnerabilities.
Locomotion System
Respiration System
Hydraulics and Vessels System
Sensory System
...etc.

To attack the hydraulics, cut the femoral artery, or perform a blood choke on the neck.

To attack the respiration perform an airway choke, cover the mouth, or compress the chest with a triangle lock from backmount, various smothers

To attack the locomotion system, knee bar, ankle lock, sweep, leg kick.

To attack the sensory system - finger flick, finger jab, forward headlock, guillotine, smothers, right cross to point of jaw.

As you can see, using this system gives a functional grouping that one might not otherwise be able to freely access. It's a lot better than just 'punching and kicking' without an object in mind.

If the body can not sense, locomote, pump blood, keep blood pressure or get oxygen, it fails. Don't stop the attack until one or more systems are disabled.

The best attack may be to the respiration system, since it is reversible and causes temporary unconsciousness. Though one might resist pugilistic attacks, no one can resist a blood or an airway choke for long (except, maybe certain large judo experts). (a blood choke still uses respiration, and oxygen transport as the operative method)

Anyway, yeah the body is a system of nano-gears and ratchets, rods and microtubules. Even the way cells divide uses a system of microtubules and sliding filaments, and the way an iris expands and contracts is mechanical, as well.

If you look at root mechanisms, you often find very mechanical processes going on, from enzymatic reactions, to the way protein components assemble.



[edit on 5-3-2008 by Badge01]

Interesting thread..

I'm thinking that while its at least possible, although not highly probable, that humans evolved from machines, its VERY likely that machines that are created by humans resemble our biology. Think about it: In attempting to solve problems posed to us by nature, what better muse could we possibly have then nature herself?

As for nanotechnology, I agree that its truly where technology as a whole is headed. But that is perhaps just an outgrowth of where it was headed the whole time, anyways. ENIAC was a breakthrough of computing technology, but took up an entire room. Now, pocket calculators blow ENIAC away when it comes to computing power. The more advanced our technology becomes, the smaller it seems to become (except for televisions apparently).

The really exciting thing is what will happen when man and machine begin to come together. There will certainly be social disruptions and perhaps some chaos, but just think about what will emerge from the other side. We have essentially taken the evolutionary football away from Mother Nature, and are running it down the field ourselves now.

It's as good an answer as any to the question of how life began, I suppose - certainly it makes you wonder if the boundaries between technology and nature are as profound as we perceive them to be now.

All I can say is, I look down at the "nature's fine machine" that I'm currently in possession of, and I wonder if maybe I was an early model that had a few bugs! I want LoneWeasel 2.0, please, and as soon as possible!

LW

Art mimics nature, Maths mimics nature, Science mimics nature, technology mimics nature, Music mimics nature - the list can go on....

Maybe we are simply looking at two side of the same coin.

If we were to see the bigger picture maybe it would be totally clear that this is really a very mundane (for want of a better word) part of nature - erg life is the rule in the universe and not the exception...

Nice thread BTW

It seems likely. It appears you've uncovered something that most would regard as unlikely or a waste of time to research. I believe everything is connected in some weird way, whether it be humans or any other type of manifestation that we create. (ie: machines..)

I've thought we were machines for a long time Glad someone else thinks so too!

Originally posted by Badge01
What if life was started by alien nano-probes that were self-replicating, using available strata and media to build copies of themselves.

I bet you watch a lot of stargate considering it sounds like the replicators.

Seriously, I guess anything is possible. While I don't believe its plausible, it is a interesting theory.

reply to post by 4thDoctorWhoFan


As a mater affect I was watching Doctor Who, The Genesis of the Daleks the other day. The Daleks are biological machines, a blob inside a fully mobile, armored, and weaponized droid. The Time Lords sent the Doctor and his entourage back in time to the planet where the Daleks originated. The Daleks were originally similar to humans and they created machines allowing them to continue to survive and be a dominant species when they evolve in to helpless creatures that can’t survive on there own.

Maybe if we didn’t evolve from robots, maybe we will evolve into them if our race survives long enough. Or if we did evolve from robots, as the OP suggests, I think eventually we may go full circle and evolve back into them. If evolution is real, and the human race reaches a genetic dead end we may have to rely on robotics for our race to survive.

Tom Baker is my favorite Doctor, I don’t know the order he fits into, is he the fourth Doctor.




[edit on 6-3-2008 by jojoKnowsBest]

[edit on 6-3-2008 by jojoKnowsBest]

Originally posted by jojoKnowsBest
Tom Baker is my favorite Doctor, I don’t know the order he fits into, is he the fourth Doctor?

Yes, Tom Baker is the 4th Doctor. Genesis of the Daleks is a very good story and very enjoyable. I had not thought about it in relation to this topic, so thanks!

Why should this be suprising? There are limited ways for things to "work" under our laws of physics. Parallels between biological machines and inorganic machines just point back to that fact and only differ in material used. To draw a conclusion that humans may have 'evolved from alien nano machines' is purely imaginative and quite irrelevant to the subject matter in this thread. Infact drawing any wild conclusion from these inevitable similarities is silly, imo.

first let me say that this is a bold, interesting and as far as i know an unprecedented idea, and i thank you for sharing it with us.

however, i don't think it's necessary for Humanity to have evolved from machines for us to bear such a high degree of resemblance to the various technologies we create.

machines evolved from us; they evolved from the combination of reason and opposable thumbs which we were the first (and so far, of course, only) species on this planet to enjoy.

however, i do find this fact to be metaphysically significant. we have learned to create rudimentary, simplistic animate objects in our own image. perhaps, as we continue to hone this skill as we have done for two thousand years, it will become clearer that God may not be the progenitor of Mankind, but rather our reason for existing-- to one day create, or as a species to become, the Divine.


[edit on 6-3-2008 by The Parallelogram]

reply to post by SteveR


This is true. and it is why i propose that life exists in any concievable (and logical via causality) form you could imagine (and most, you likely can't).

Beings that live in our outer atmosphere, feeding on plasma (or, as Zorgon refers to them, "Critters".) It could be anything....crittes are as likely as any i suppose.

All things that we call life on Earth are machines. Every single one. If i needed to turn CO2 into O2 (with carbon separated and freed), i cannot think of a better globalized mechanism than trees. They replicate and spread on their own (which seems to be a hallmark of biology, yes?).

It is why i wonder how evolution can be a serious consideration (although i support the concept, relative to genetic drift), as nature is more about happenstance, not engineering and design.

But i suppose this brings us back to your statement. There really ARE only so many ways that matter can arrange itself, and things that are more durable seem to stick around longer (and thus propagate).

[edit on 6-3-2008 by bigfatfurrytexan]

Speaking as machine to machine...

...I should like to congratulate the OP for the elegance and clarity with which the thesis was laid out. You are right, of course. Living things are machines, albeit with special attributes.

Originally posted by bigfatfurrytexan
All things that we call life on Earth are machines. Every single one.

Yes indeed.

It is why i wonder how evolution can be a serious consideration (although i support the concept, relative to genetic drift), as nature is more about happenstance, not engineering and design.

Don't forget that engineering and design respond to the fairly stochastic demands of the market. Evolution is a concept that applies in spades to machines, with market forces taking the place of natural selection. Actually, they're pretty much the same thing.

It's true that machines don't yet reproduce, but give them time.

weiiiiiird double-post effect, there. Sorry, everyone ...

[edit on 7/3/08 by hidatsa]

Originally posted by The Parallelogram
God may not be the progenitor of Mankind, but rather our reason for existing-- to one day create, or as a species to become, the Divine.
[edit on 6-3-2008 by The Parallelogram]

It's in the ether, of course, but the relationships between God, Man and Machine have been taxing my imagination for a month or so now.

Through history, as man has discovered more about his own internal workings, he has often found analogies in his own creations. For a century, throughout the wonders of the Industial era (which coincided roughly with modern anatomical study), the heart was like "a pump" and later "an engine", though these descriptions fall far short of the truth as I'm sure any heart specialist could explain. In the last half-century, the brain was "like a computer", because by determining how a computer must function, it was revealed that our own thought processes were similarly comprised, though on a much swifter and more exotic level.

Now we have the potential for creating an artificial immune system which may one day form an essential subroutine in any android robot we may feel tempted to create.

The human form, from its inner recesses to its outermost extremities, seems to us to be the ideal physical form. It has evolved - like the Ferarri evolved from the Penny Farthing bicycle, like the robotic machines in a nuclear power plant will (possibly) evolve into Data-like positronic-brained entities - from a basic amoeba.

And, yes, we are machines. Dogs are machines, too. And swans and the mighty redwood tree.

My question is, were we constructed? Might God be a super-mechanic? Are we the carbon-based construct of a silicon-based creator, left here, possibly abandoned, to fend for ourselves? Have we evolved through reconstruction and adaptation in the only way possible; the way that has been imprinted on our CPUs which have guided our nano-immune systems?

And are our own current silicon-based constructs the anscestors of the inheritors of our legacy? Will our robot bases on far-flung planets where man may never tread, themselves evolve into conscious beings and rule their worlds while man achieves his ultimate goal - a merger with the Cosmic All; a oneness that absolves our race of further participation, other than guidance and observation, in the physical world.

And will our robots come to know us as their God and dream of their own ascention into deity, just as we will by then have done; just as our builders and engineers have already done many millennia ago?

Originally posted by Now_Then
Art mimics nature, Maths mimics nature, Science mimics nature, technology mimics nature, Music mimics nature - the list can go on....

Maybe we are simply looking at two side of the same coin.

Good point. Look how interconnected nature is when it comes to things like Pi or Phi. The Golden Ratio (phi) can be seen represented throughout nature, from the spiral of seeds in a sunflower, to the arms of Spiral Galaxies. Nature seems to love fractals, so it would make sense that things which Man makes would take on certain characteristics of ourselves, and by proxy, nature.